Fixation
by bandedbulbussnarfblat
Summary: It starts like this: Lex is bored In a world with no Superman, Lex and Lois fixate on Batman.


p align="LEFT"Lex Luthor is one of the first mysteries he solves./p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"When Alexander Luthor Sr. dies, it's ruled as an accident. Bruce doesn't pay much attention, because Luthor was a bastard and as far as he's concerned the world is a better place without him. There's a funeral he wouldn't bother to attend, but he's dating Vicki Vale at the time and she wants in and no one would question the woman on Bruce Wayne's arm./p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"(Bruce has a history of doing stupid things for the women he's involved with. Alfred reminds him of this frequently.)/p  
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p align="LEFT"Vicki wants an expose on the funeral, no press has been allowed and she's not above using her personal connections to get a story. She's tenacious that way; Bruce admires it, there's something attractive about that dogged determination. It also makes her dangerous; her latest obsession has been to uncover the identity of Batman, which is the reason Bruce started dating her in the first place. Find out what she knows, lead her astray, have her emotionally compromised enough that if she should discover the truth, she'll never print it to protect him. It's manipulative and it's playing with fire; Alfred tuts and frowns and disapproves. (Alfred disapproves of a great many things Bruce does, so Bruce has learned to overlook it.)/p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"The thing is, Vicki is looking for something. A funeral is hardly a story, billionaire business icon or not. There's something else she's digging for. Bruce only knows Luthor through work, sometimes their businesses are competing, other times they've came together to throw resources at whatever humanitarian cause was popular at the moment. They're associates, nothing more, but showing up looks good. He isn't the only one; Oliver Queen is there, and Maxwell Lord, a few other of the rich and elite who come out to shake hands and fake smiles and sympathy. It's all a goddamn circus act and Bruce hates it./p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"Maybe she thinks one of them is the Batman. They have the resources, if not the inclination. Bruce can hardly imagine Maxwell Lord dressed in cape and cowl, he'd likely worry it'd muss his hair. Oliver almost puts the Bruce Wayne billionaire playboy act to shame, the latest tabloids have him caught in some sort of sex-tape scandal with no less than five lingerie models. Which proves he has the stamina to be the Bat, but where would he get the time, Vicki had questioned over breakfast while scrolling through the gossip column. She'd been obsessively checking it since they began dating, looking nervously for any mention of her name—she wants to report the news, not be the news./p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"Bruce slides an arm around the pew and leans close, whispers lowly in Vicki's ear "Are you going to tell me why we're here?"/p  
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p align="LEFT"Vicki doesn't bat an eye, keeps her expression neutral. The woman has a hell of a poker face. "I believe Luthor was murdered."/p  
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p align="LEFT"There's a sudden glint in her eye, there and gone so fast someone else who didn't know her as well might not catch it. It's that dog with a bone stubbornness, that drive that keeps her asking questions and poking her nose into places it doesn't belong. It's the way she looks when she talks about Batman./p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"It's a way out./p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"Give Vicki something new to fixate on. Another story to unravel. Distract her and use the time to build some false leads that will take her investigation far from him. "Whose your suspect?"/p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"Vicki jerks her head up in direction of the front, where a scrawny teenager has just come to stand and speak. He has a mane of hair that floats about his head like a halo, a face still soft with youth but a glimmer of something dark in his eyes. There's something about him that's disarming, both awkward and charming, an aura of nervous energy. Luthor's son./p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"He'll inherit billions, of course, and isn't that the world's oldest motive for murder? After the funeral Bruce starts digging. School records, juvenile records, medical files, all that he can on Lex Luthor. His money gives him access to things Vicki can't reach, the good folks of Metropolis aren't as easy to bribe as those in Gotham, but everyone has a price. Mostly, he just wants something to take Vicki's attention away from Batman, but curiosity gets the best of him so he looks./p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"What he finds turns his stomach. There's a chain of half-started DCS investigations, medical files that speak of repeated abuse, lacerations and concussions and broken bones, dislocated shoulders, multiple burn wounds, bruises consistent with blunt force trauma. If Lex Luthor killed his father, then surely he deserved it. There isn't a jury alive that would put him behind bars after seeing this kind of evidence./p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"He sends it all to Vicki. She never publishes it. Later, he'll wish she did./p  
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p align="CENTER"/p  
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p align="LEFT"Lois knows about the batman thing; everyone knows about the batman thing. It's just for most people the response is 'meh, Gotham.' To be fair, Gotham has one of the highest crime rates in the country and the criminals there like to run around in costumes. It's to be expected when the city houses an asylum for the criminally insane, but can't seem to keep the criminals eminside/em the asylum. The bat thing is hardly a bleep on the radar compared to the murder clown or guy who can freeze things./p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"All in all, it doesn't catch her interest. So a guy likes to dress like a bat and punch criminals; that sounds like he needs a therapist, not a spot on the front page. Besides, it isn't her city or her story. The emGotham Gazette/em covers the bat. Vicki Vale covers the bat. Lois admires Vicki, she's nearly a decade older, but Lois remembers reading her stuff in college, liking the way she was no nonsense and to the point, willing to point out uncomfortable truths and unafraid of tackling the hard stuff. She's a role model, of sorts. So for the sake of professional courtesy, Lois leaves the Batman alone./p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"Then for awhile the Batman disappears. It's not that he isn't active, just that he isn't being covered as much. Vicki Vale is running the emGotham Gazette/em, editor and chief, and like Perry likes to remind her, running a paper leaves little time for writing for it. Other papers do start to write about him, rags you'd use to line your litter box with, but they all share the same common theme, Batman is scary, Batman is dangerous./p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"Perry refuses to let her cover him. Lois does it anyway. Rinse, lather, repeat. She'll win this, she always does. She's the best Perry's got, he'll give a little ground for her where he won't for others./p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"Two weeks later Perry slides a plane ticket to Gotham on her desk. It's coach, and normally she'd barter for economy plus, but Lois is wise enough to know when to pick her battles. "You have a week to find something. Plane leaves in two hours."/p  
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p align="LEFT""Thanks Perry." Lois grins. Victory is sweet./p  
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p align="LEFT""Don't thank me yet. You're covering Luthor tonight."/p  
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p align="LEFT"If sharks could smile, they would look like Perry White, Lois thinks to herself. She hates Luthor and the feeling is mutual. "They'll never let me in. They sued for defamation after that article I wrote last year on-"/p  
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p align="LEFT""They lost." Perry cuts in. His face is smug. Lois resigns herself to her fate; this is the price she pays for getting the Batman story. It'll be worth it./p  
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p align="LEFT""I can't believe you're assigning me a fluff piece. On emLuthor/em."/p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"Perry pats her on the arm. "Try to play nice. Maybe we can beat our record of years without a lawsuit."/p  
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p align="CENTER"/p  
p align="CENTER" /p  
p align="LEFT"Perry White has no love for Lex Luthor, and Lex is well aware./p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"Lois Lane in particular shares this sentiment, so it's always Lois Lane that's assigned to cover him. He has no doubts it will be her who shows up tonight, and he cannot emwait/em to put her and Bruce in a room together. He wonders how long it will take her to work out who he is./p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"Once you started looking, it was pathetically emeasy/em to figure out./p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"What he hadn't expected was the Bat to start looking back./p  
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p align="CENTER"/p  
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p align="LEFT"It starts like this: Lex is bored./p  
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p align="LEFT"Lex is always bored; the people around him aren't interesting enough, aren't stimulating enough, he needs something to do, something to focus his energy on. He wants something new to play with, Mercy tells him, dry as bone. (Mercy knows him too well; she's becoming a liability; he'll have to take care of that eventually.)/p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"Batman catches his eye. So, on a whim, he takes Mercy and rents a place in Gotham, leaving his company to be looked after by a board of directors that are frankly a little too relieved to see him go. He'll have to deal with emthat/em later as well./p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"It's as easy as hiring some thugs, bribing the right people, building the right software. The media on Batman is easy to access, there are enough snippets of images that he can create a facial recognition program. Material from the suit and car show that the metal is some alloy not commonly sold, it must be personally manufactured. Either Batman has an endorser or he's independently wealthy; given he wears a mask, Lex guesses the second, any man who dresses up like a bat probably doesn't maintain healthy relationships./p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"From there it's narrowing it down to Gotham's elite; who has the money, the access, the time. The facial recognition software knocks out over half the candidates, a few more are eliminated for being too short, too fat, too thin. He cross exams social media and newspaper sightings of the Batman, eliminates anyone pictured at the same time the bat was elsewhere./p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"Results are inconclusive, but he narrows his list down to three suspects, one of which is Bruce Wayne. And Lex just emknows/em. He feels it, down in his bones. Oh, it could be one of the others, but only Bruce Wayne has the tragic backstory, the lifestyle to allow him to go lurking in dark alleys beating criminals. There's no family to speak of to keep him back, no one to wonder where he ran off to in the dead of night. He has no one but a butler, and Lex knows from Mercy that the help can be especially loyal./p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"He arranges a meeting with Bruce, the suggestion of a shared project to 'protect the citizens of Gotham.' Lex was quite insistent that he met with Bruce personally. It takes a few weeks of Bruce blowing him off, but Lex is persistent, he knows how to wait to get what he wants./p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"He's in jeans and a tee shirt when Bruce arrives—late, Lex notes, and probably purposely so—taking a seat across from him. It's one of those tiny chairs, intricately decorated, but made more for society ladies taking luncheons than great, hulking men like Bruce Wayne. Lex grins at him and pops a jolly rancher in his mouth (Mercy tells him he'll get cavities, if he continues to run on candy and energy drinks. Lex doesn't mind, he has enough money to get new teeth if needed.) "Want one? It's cherry."/p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"Bruce smiles at him blandly, all business and emboring boring boring/em. Lex can see why he's kept his secret, no one would think anyone who could look this vapid could hide something like that. Luckily, Lex knows how to see past facades. He's worked years to perfectly craft his own, boyish, slightly manic, unnerving but easily underestimated, a brilliant eccentric who doesn't quite fit in with the one percent he inhabits. Everyone thinks he's too young, too rash, too immature, too naive. They still see him as a child running daddy's company, regardless of how far he's come since he freed himself of his father's shadow./p  
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p align="LEFT""Sorry I'm late, you know how it is" says Bruce-Wayne-the-businessman./p  
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p align="LEFT""No worries, no worries" Lex answers, upbeat and just a little off. The waiter comes to put down glasses of champagne and two pieces of cake. It's chocolate with melted chocolate in the center and covered with whip-cream. "Hope you don't mind; you were late so I ordered."/p  
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p align="LEFT""You order dessert first?" There's something vaguely disapproving in Bruce's tone, something nearly parental and emoh/em, that is interesting./p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"Lex dips a finger into the dollop of whip-cream with a bit of flair and brings it to his mouth to suck off slowly. He pulls it out with a wet pop and shrugs slightly, smiling up at Bruce with bright eyes. "What can I say? I have a sweet-tooth."/p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"Lex pokes his finger into the cake, letting the warm chocolate gush out and scoops it up. When he sucks his finger in his mouth he closes his eyes and hums a little in appreciation. He can feel Bruce watching him, assessing him, trying to figure out how much of this is a performance, what he wants. The humming is a little over the top, Lex can admit, but it's fun to play the unrepentant flirt. Especially with men; it unnerves them, unsettles them and that gives Lex the upper hand. Bruce Wayne is unfazed; Lex wonders if he likes boys as well as girls or if he's just desensitized to people coming on to him. Billionaires do tend to get their fair share of over eager suitors./p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"Bruce says something mild about having a meeting later, but Lex knows when he's being dismissed. His father was an expert at dismissing him. All Bruce wants is for Lex to speak his piece so he can smile and nod, then promptly forget his existence. It's irritating, really. Given more time, he could bring a man like Bruce Wayne to his knees. "It's about Gotham's latest star, the Batman."/p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"Bruce deserves an Oscar because his face registers no response, nothing more that politely feigned interest. "Slow news day in Metropolis?"/p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"Lex swirls his champagne, takes a gulp. "What's interesting, Bruce—can I call you Bruce—is that my people have a sample taken from one of his crime scenes, and did you know that his suit is made from a material that only Wayne Enterprises manufactures?"/p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"Bruce is calm, but there is something, something dark that flickers in his eyes. "If you're suggesting someone in my company is aiding criminals-"/p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"Lex waves his hand, not wanting to hear the false assurances and oh so noble speech. "Of course not, Luthor tech is stolen and sold on the black market, I assume the same is true for you. It's the cost of being the best." A little much, but flattery does go a long way. "What I was thinking is you and I could work together to build something similar for our boys in blue..."/p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"Two months later, Metropolis police officers have new state of the art bullet proof cars and LexCorp is working on creating a lighter, more flexible body armor that mirrors the bats. Without the bells and whistles, of course. He's already outfitted his own men with various weapons he's copied from Batman; Mercy does love her toys. Batman will notice sooner or later, but he's in Gotham and that keeps him busy enough./p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"Besides, he should understand; Lex is trying to save the world. All the emfreaks/em out there, the monsters, they'll need something to protect humanity from them./p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"Lex is going to save them all./p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="CENTER"/p  
p align="CENTER" /p  
p align="LEFT"Baiting the bat is a dangerous idea, but Lex loves courting danger./p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"These last few months of living in Metropolis and Gotham both, running a tech empire and collecting data on the Batman have been equal parts exhausting and exhilarating. But as much fun as spying on the bat can be, he thinks it's time to emmeet/em him./p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"He slides up to Bruce at the next charity gala. This one is for saving koalas, emkoalas/em, he contemplates buying one for a pet, but Mercy starts throwing around words like 'illegal' and 'irresponsible' and she's seventy percent of his impulse control so listens. "Bruce" he greets, like they are old friends and stands a bit too close./p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT""Lex"/p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"Lex places a hand on Bruce's arm—his sleeve is smooth under his fingers, the suit probably cost more than he pays Mercy a year—and leans in. "I have a proposition for you."/p  
p align="LEFT"He's looking up at Bruce through his lashes—he has to look up, the man in is a mountain—and his tone is soft and enticing, nearly seductive. Mercy calls it his snake oil voice, says he could sell sand in the desert with it./p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT""A proposition?" Bruce repeats, dislodging Lex's arm by reaching for a glass of champagne from a passing waiter. It's only for show, he doesn't drink a drop of it. He only wants Lex to stop touching him. He's emuncomfortable/em. Point for Lex./p  
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p align="LEFT""Concerning our favorite vigilante" Lex says, grinning. "Do you think the bat thing is a strange and specific fetish or does it have symbolic purpose?"/p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT""I couldn't say" Bruce intones, and he is good, he's very good, a natural born liar./p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT""Doesn't matter. I have one of his toys. Wanna see?"/p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"Bruce glances around the room. Lex knows he knows it isn't here—he has GPS tracking on his equipment, tracking Lex gleefully disabled. "You have it with you? Aren't you afraid he'll come looking for it?"/p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"Lex leans forward and takes the untouched champagne out of Bruce's grasp. "I see something I want; I take it." He tilts his head back and swallows down the champagne in one go. It leaves the vulnerable line of his neck exposed; Lex wonders if Bruce is thinking of squeezing his hands around it, leaving his skin as black and blue as the criminals he catches. The thought makes his head spin a little. (Or maybe it's the champagne.)/p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT""That sounds like a common criminal."/p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"Lex twirls the empty glass in his hands absently and smiles. "We're CEOs; the only difference between us and common criminals is we can afford better lawyers."/p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"Bruce smiles back, and Lex remembers in the wild that animals bare their teeth as a warning. "I'd watch out, I hear the Batman doesn't like criminals."/p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT""Speak of the devil, where was I? Right, I have one of his-"/p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT""Mr. Luthor?"/p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"Right on cue Mercy rounds the corner, looking elegant and efficient in her suit and heels. (She once told him she knew seven ways to kill a man with a single kitten heel.) In her hands is her phone and her tablet, both lit up in use. "There's a situation."/p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"Lex hands the glass back to Bruce with an apologetic shrug. "Duty calls."/p  
p align="LEFT" /p  
p align="LEFT"He doesn't glance back as he walks away, but he can feel Bruce's eyes on him. The bait is set; all he has to do is wait for Bruce to bite./p 


End file.
